Noor Fredly

Lament of ezra

The low cries of worship skip across the stacked stones; the wall stands in the moonlight, waits to be whole. Sawdust bathes in the starlit air above the city—clean work in the clear land You planned for us. The tears on my palms tremble like my grieving heart and our guilty city. Stacked by the tents, our skins still bulge with the waters from Ahavah, where Your sword watched over our camp and our gold; Your love, like a sword before us, cleared the bandits from the road to the half-built city while we clutched our scrolls and sacks of silver. The half-built house, where we looked for food, held poison; we looked for friends, but found fools. Eloheinu, I am too ashamed to lift my face to You. Lowing in the fields, our flocks, patient, listen to their shepherd’s songs, awaiting the blade. We, like sheep, have gone astray. Our sins are higher than our heads—we deserve their fate! Nebuchadnezzar’s gold, Your gold, gifted back to us, still bright from the fire of Solomon’s crucibles, sits tied in our tents in droves to adorn Your house again—Your house, half-shod with cedars from Cyrus that stand in testimony against us. My God, you took off our chains and gave kindness from kings to rebuild these ruins, which the sons of the Levites have filled with the sins of the Jebusites, the Perizzites and Canaanites, You had routed from our hills. You cleared the land for us; we invited in impurity, married with obscenity, poured tar on our white wool. You have punished the floods of our sins as if they were small as a spilled cup; shall we break the dam again? How high will Your anger rise? The camp around us testifies that You are worthy of the gifts from every hand, the love of every eye. Here we are before You in our guilt; not one of us can stand.

Noor Fredly is an undergraduate student in Linguistics. She loves to serve in local ministry and plans to enter the mission field after college.